A Pocket Classics hardcover collection of a century of 36 terrific stories by major writers
from across Africa selected by the Booker Prize–winning Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri
Award-winning writer Ben Okri author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road
curates this one-volume overview of the best of African literature. Here is a pantheon of
enormous talents from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries hailing from a wide variety of
countries and cultures and including multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in literature the
Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The writers include Chinua Achebe Ngugi wa
Thiong'o Tayeb Salih Doris Lessing J. M. Coetzee M. G. Vassanji Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
and many more. The short story form has a rich history on the African continent drawing on a
deep well of traditional oral tales fables and legends as well as a vital and ongoing
engagement with the forces of history and modernity. Subjects range from the vicissitudes of
daily life to sweeping social commentary with such varied characters as a shopkeeper yearning
for love in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Cages ” a faith-healing priest in Bessie Head’s “Jacob ” a
freedom fighter facing apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s “Amnesty ” and invading aliens overcome
by music in Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s “Jazz and Palm Wine.” Whether they touch on the spirit
world the urban experience colonialism politics humor or love these stories are both
dazzling and moving. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards printing on
acid-free cream-colored paper with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping decorative
endpapers silk ribbon markers European-style half-round spines and a full-color illustrated
jacket.
